Genesis 9:1-7 "The New World Symphony" - Paul Twiss

good morning welcome again we're so happy you're here and we're also thrilled to have paul and laura twist with us uh paul out of all the men that have that we've known uh here uh since we've started trinity bible church we've known paul the longest and i i'd like to see a show of hands how many of you here have heard paul preach okay a few all right so about seven eight years ago um we were in our previous church looking for someone that might could potentially be an assistant pastor and we reached out to john macarthur and he and about a year later sent us a cd disc and he said i want you to listen to this young man preach and we listened to it and we said wow he's fantastic he said well i'm going to send him down there and let you meet him and his name was paul twist well the lord had different ideas for paul and one was the longer paul stayed in california with john mcarthur the longer and the shorter it took where john said he has a round-trip ticket kent he can't stay there i want to keep him and paul has turned out to be brilliant and an incredible man for the lord he just finished his phd and you will listen to him and realize that he is from england he's a graduate of cambridge and he and laura have six children and they have snuck away for a couple of nights to be here in dallas and get away from their children have a small vacation so we are super excited to have paul we're thrilled one thing i always say about paul and he's tired of me saying it that he served in the british royal navy on a nuclear submarine and he was in the back i guess in the back of that thing for i don't know how many months they'd go under underwater and he would study theology and the lord used that in a way to sanctify him so i just can't tell you how thrilled we are to have paul and laura they're great friends of our church and you will be very blessed to hear his teaching thank you paul well good morning this is um this is the first time i've been in this building so it's been a while since i've been with you we were trying to figure this out last night uh i guess the last time i was out here was in november and that was in the coffee shop and as kent just said i've been walking with trinity since they began just seeing how the lord has been at work amongst you and i was just reflecting on that this morning so the first time i ever came out you were obviously in the coffee shop but but a small group and uh and praise the lord for that and then i would come out um every couple of months and the group would grow and it wasn't that long in the in the history of the church that i was saying to the elders are you guys thinking ahead because you're at capacity right now in this coffee shop and there were some sundays that i was there and it was you know standing room only and the lord was evidently blessing the the work there and i'm here this morning just amazed at god's grace to make this available as a building but even more than that just to have added to your number in the way that he has and i was just sharing with a brother this morning the reason for it is clear the reason for it is clear is because this is a church that teaches the word of god and if you have a church that teaches the word of god then the lord is at work there and so we can praise him this morning and i stand here just rejoicing at the lord's evident work amongst you all so uh it's a delight for me to be here it's a delight for me to be here with laura uh it's normally our policy for me to try when i do travel to try and take one of the kids and uh very occasionally very occasionally we're able to figure out some child care so that laura and i can travel together and it's a weird feeling uh to be to be going through your motions without any children around you and you can sit and actually take your time over your meal and uh you're not you're not thinking about you know the needs of of any of these six and and so we're very grateful for your uh hospitality and your willingness to allow us to do this and then that leads us to the ministry of the word this morning and it's my privilege to open up genesis in chapter nine verses one through seven chapter nine and verses one through seven is our text i'll read the text and then we'll pray and we'll ask the lord's blessing on our study genesis chapter nine verses one through seven and god blessed noah and his sons and said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea into your hand they are delivered every moving thing that lives shall be food for you and as i gave you the green plants i give you everything but you shall not eat flesh with its life that is its blood and for your lifeblood i will require a reckoning from every beast i will acquire it and from man and from this fellow man i will require a reckoning for the life of man whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for god made man in his own image and you be fruitful and multiply increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it that's reason the word of the living god let's pray and ask for his help our father we do praise you this morning for your evident grace amongst us your rich blessing on this local church father we thank you this morning for the gift of the gospel by your grace you sent your son to live a perfect life amongst us to die a criminal's death to rise again after three days from the grave so that when we put our faith in him as our savior our sins are forgiven we praise you this morning that more than that we're credited with his righteousness so that we come here as brothers and sisters in christ accepted by you declared to be righteous we praise you that you call us into fellowship so as to worship you together and that we do that through your word that you've given us your word by which we can know you by which our hearts can be instructed and by which we can worship you father we ask now as we give our attention to your word that you would guide our hearts soften our hearts to receive the truth guide my words lord so that your work would be done amongst us you know all it is that we bring here this morning you know the details of our lives you know the burdens that we carry you know the problems that we bring here this morning you know our grief you know our joy father you know our sin and our desire is that you would be honored through salvation and through sanctification please do your work in our lives this morning through your word we ask in jesus name amen dvorak's symphony number nine is perhaps his most famous piece dvorak symphony number nine is maybe his most famous piece and you would know it not by a number but by the more commonly given title the new world symphony dvorak's new world symphony is perhaps his most famous piece and in fact one of the most famous symphonies ever written if you were in the uk during the 90s one of the melodies in the symphony was used as part of a commercial for bread and so everyone back home knows it as the bread melody if you don't know of the tune by its name just look it up later today and i promise you you'll recognize it morjack's new world symphony the history of the piece is interesting as you research why it was dvorak wrote it or what he had in his mind it turns out it came off the back of a visit to america he visited and spent some time here and he discovered in many senses a new world a new world to that which he was used to and one thing that intrigued him and that he particularly enjoyed were the melodies that he discovered amongst the native americans and so what he tried to do was to to use those melodic patterns and to incorporate them into this symphony and the new world symphony when you listen to it is certainly a piece that communicates a notion of joy of celebration even of triumph there are very celebratory or triumphant melodies throughout the symphony at the same time it's worth remembering that dvorak's new world symphony is written in the key of e minor it's a very joyful piece and yet it comes in the form of a minor key and as you listen to it there are other melodies intertwined with the joyful ones that are melancholy there are melodies within the symphony that are sad and speak of a longing and again the history of the piece is interesting because dvorak was writing about his experiences in america and at the same time while he was here it's told that he felt very homesick he longed to be back with his people he longed to be back in the place that he had come from and that's reflected in the music it's very joyful and triumphant celebratory and then at the same time there are these sad pining melodies intertwined now i tell you that because i would say in a sense genesis 9 verses 1 through 7 is moses's new world symphony it's his new world symphonies he portrays to us a new world the waters of the flood subside and noah steps forth with his family cast very much in the likeness of adam and he's entering into this new world and in this text there's undoubtedly notes of triumph or of hope there is a clear expression of god's commitment to persist with humanity and that should cause us to rejoice the fact that the judgment the act of judgment that was the flood was not terminal god didn't say i'm done with you forever but actually i'll preserve a family and through this family we'll start again should be a cause of great celebration and praise and rejoicing for us this morning and then at the same time within our text we see echoes reminders that this new world is not the way we would like it to be noah steps forth and god commits to keep working with him and with humanity and at the same time he says and sin is still around i wiped the slate clean through the flood we're starting over again and yet sin persists and within this text we're reminded of the brokenness now of the world in which we live the flood couldn't deal with sin and so problems prevail and god reminds noah of that at this point of a new beginning in the book of genesis so the the holistic picture as we look at just these seven verses is one of both hope and of despair one of both blessing and of prevailing curses it's a it's a mixed image we see both of those themes juxtaposed against one another and if we were to step back and to look at the picture of this new world honestly if we're to think about how it is that this text comes to us and the reality of sin that we see around us there is no ultimate solution found here the covenant that god makes with noah is not the final word in god's redemptive plan if we're to deal honestly with the fact that though god persists with us by his grace yet there is sin we look for a final solution and the noahic covenant is one that should rightly eventually drive us to christ the text this morning is one that teaches us of god's grace in persisting with us the reality of sin in the world around us and an exhortation to flee to christ that is the message of this text and as we think about its structure it's difficult to divide because the themes of hope and despair are very much intermixed with each other it's a difficult passage to break up though if we were i would say we could spend some time just looking at the first verse the first verse and in this i want to focus on particularly the man noah and then we'll spend the second half of the time looking at the remainder where we'll look at the reality of this the world in which he inhabits so first of all the man knower and then the world in which he lives through which we see the themes of hope and despair and they work together so as to drive us to christ let's begin then by looking at the man noah we see that god blessed him first one god bless noah and his sons and he said to them be fruitful multiply and fill the earth now just think about the display of god's grace with which we're met immediately the flood waters have subsided the last thing that we read of humanity prior to the flood was that the meditations of their heart were only ever evil continuously sin had gotten so bad that god regretted having created this species it's a desperate situation back in genesis chapter 6 and so god rightly and justly judges the earth he floods the whole earth that was the last thing that we read of humanity and now as the flood waters subside we read god blessed noah that is god's grace on display that is his faithfulness you have not been faithful towards me but i will be faithful towards you you have not been steadfast in your disposition towards me but i will be steadfast in my goodness to you and god says this is my blessing be more be fruitful multiply and fill the earth so these aren't two separate thoughts they're one thought god bless noah and the content of the blessing is be fruitful multiply and fill the earth as you read those words of blessing it might be that you're sat here thinking haven't we heard this before and you're exactly right now i know that you guys are now experts in genesis you've been here for some time and you're going to be here for some time more you're only in chapter nine there's a few more chapters to go but by way of reminder the meaning in the book of genesis of the text is often borne out by virtue of repetition the way in which old testament narrative works and especially the book of genesis is often by virtue of repetition so here's what i mean if you sit down and read all of genesis in one sitting there's going to be a number of occasions in that reading where you sit there and say feels like we've been here before that's exactly the point the way genesis is constructed is that it's a very repetitious narrative things happen that look very similar to previous events that's not an accident it's not an indication of a overly simplistic story it's a very complex story but the way in which the ancient mind the israelite mind would tell story and create meaning is by virtue of repeating things and every time you come across a repetition it is an invitation to you to compare and contrast the way i teach it to my students i say think about the the spot the difference things that you give your kids two pictures they look the same but there's subtle differences you look to look at the differences it's the same in genesis very soon in the book of genesis you're going to read three times a patriarch telling a foreign king she's not my wife she's my sister three times that's an invitation to compare the three narratives you compare and contrast there'll be some similarities there'll be some subtle differences it's often in the differences that the meaning of the text arises that's the way genesis works so here we read some words that have come up before and you know they came up at the very beginning in genesis chapter 1 as god gave his mandate to adam now let's just step back a bit and i'm sure you guys have talked about this but the whole flood narrative is actually written in the form of a new creative work so just think about it with me on a big picture level sin has gotten really bad god judges the earth he covers the earth with water and the picture is one of chaos the earth is covered with water after a time the waters subside dry land emerges and from there a man steps forth the way that the flood narrative has been written and presented to us is intentionally as a new creative act the flood narrative reads very much according to the logic of genesis chapter one the earth is covered with the waters a wind comes the waters subside and dry land emerges and a man steps forth this is a new creative act god is starting a new world and from the ark the man that steps forth is noah who is presented to us in the likeness of adam you can think of noah as a new adam he is the head of this new humanity and so it stands to reason that god gives him the same instruction that he gave to adam be fruitful multiply fill the earth so let's just think about the similarities number one god was gracious enough to not end the story with the flood but he was gracious enough to preserve one family and to start over again in the same way that he started with adam god is gracious to not say i'm done he didn't need us and we deserved to have the story finished at the point of the flood and yet in his goodness he keeps going and he says i'm gonna persist with you to noah let's think about the content of the blessing be fruitful multiply and fill the earth back in genesis chapter one that comes immediately after the declaration that adam is an image bearer and in fact in our text today we'll get to the concept of being the image bearer in verse six it's actually a very kingly blessing when god says in genesis chapter one you're my image bearer what he's saying is you're my representative to be an image bearer in the ancient near east was to be a kingly representative the image bearer was always the king and the king was the representative on earth of his god and moses says look at god's grace as he makes humanity image bearers representing god here on earth and this is true of every single person here today this is not something that's confined to the world of genesis you are an image bearer you are a regal representative of the king you come today as a royal representative now just think about that god had options there is nothing that's beyond his ability with the sin that we see in genesis three through six god would be entirely justified to say in this new world i'm not going to make you guys kings anymore with the way in which we've dishonored him in genesis 3 through 6 god will be entirely justified to say we're going to start over here's a new world but you're not going to assume the same elevated position that you did back in genesis chapter one in genesis chapter one i set adam up at the pinnacle of the created order i made adam and eve on day six to sit above all of the created order they were the prized possession and they were set up as as regal representatives but in this new world you're going to come down because of your sin he would be entirely justified to say that and yet with the sin in view he gives the same imperative that he gave to adam he establishes us in that same lofty position as image bearers of the king we come here today as royal representatives above all of god's created order that is an expression of god's grace to us entirely undeserved he sets us up as image bearers to rule and to reign over the earth now think about with me the purpose why does he give this particular command it's no different from genesis chapter one in genesis chapter one he says you're my image bearer you're my representative now fill the earth back to back image bearer fill the earth now here's my paraphrase let me just collapse those two ideas into one you're my image bearer fill the earth what was the mandate make my glory known you're my image bearer you are here to represent me now fill the earth populate the earth if you take those two thoughts together the instruction was make my glory known this whole earth should be teeming with image bearers representing me i want my glory to fill the earth this is why when you get to the prophets and they look forward to the kingdom the establishment and the fulfillment of god's promises they look forward and isaiah and habakkuk say there is coming a day when the knowledge of the glory of the lord will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea they get it they're playing off of this idea and they're reaching forward and they see one day this is going to happen the mandate is going to be fulfilled now if i had asked you when you came in this morning tell me of your richest blessings i hope you would have said my salvation in christ you would be right and i say okay give me some more and you might say well my family my health the job that god has given me my circumstances all good things expressions of his kindness i wonder how many of you would have listed amongst your richest blessings that which god has asked you to do not what he's given you that one of my richest blessings is that which god has required from me this mandate rests with us the noah covenant is universal and it's ongoing this mandate comes to us fill the earth make my glory known this is your job description and it's one of your highest privileges now how can that be how can it be that god asks us something and that's our richest blessing because it gives us a sense of purpose it explains why we're here if noah had come out from the ark and god had not said this we would be floundering he would be saying i'm thankful that he preserved me i just don't know what i'm supposed to be doing right now and i often say just about every single issue that you see in society today can be worked back to in one way or another a loss of a sense of purpose we don't know what we're to be about we don't understand why we're here we've lost our sense of purpose and that leads to all kinds of issues a sense of purpose gives you direction and it causes you to flourish as i was working through this text i was reminded of a scenario many years ago now when we were first married before we started having kids laura was a teacher and she taught at a school that was a particularly difficult particularly difficult school and one of the issues in the school and of the building was of course vandalism of the bathrooms and uh the head teacher at the time she she ran a tight ship that's an understatement and she was trying to work through a lot of the school's issues and they had the money to refurbish the bathrooms to start over again and of course you put all this money in you create these new bathrooms and they'll just get vandalized again so what are we going to do and she did something that was inspired she grabbed a group of the students she brought them in and she said you guys are going to design the bathrooms she said this is your project not mine i want you to design it whatever you come up with we're going to do you pick the color scheme you pick the layout and it's going to be your bathrooms so the students did it and the head teacher was true to her words she honored their plans she honored their choices and the bathrooms were made and those bathrooms were never ever vandalized the students involved in the project guarded those bathrooms fiercely kid comes along with a spray can no you don't these are my bathrooms you don't touch them because they had a sense of purpose they'd given being given responsibility and they were flourishing god says to us you have a job you have a mandate you have a task you need to make my glory known and therein lies one of your richest blessings and as we see the new world post flood this first verse is an emphatic declaration of hope all is not lost god has not given up with us he's not done with us but he maintains our elevated position above all of created order he gives us the same job description that he gave adam he continues to exercise trust in us and for that we can be thankful our minds on reading chapter 9 verse 1 should be the same as that of the psalmist who says what is man that you are mindful of him if i'm honest about my sin if i'm honest about how we treated you and i see this emphatic declaration of hope i respond and say god why why so good why so gracious what is man that you are mindful of him this morning our responsibility is to praise god to respond in praise for his goodness to us as he starts afresh with noah and he continues by appointing us as his image bearers to fill the earth with his glory now that's half the story dvorak wrote a symphony that was full of hope and triumph but there are motifs there are lines there are melodies in there that are sad that reflect on his part are longing to be somewhere else and it's the same in our passage today there are reminders that the world is not as it once was as we move now to consider not the man noah but the world in which he lives we are reminded of the presence of sin and here again we're just teasing out this compare and contrast exercise we've noted some similarities between genesis 9 1 and genesis chapter 1 and now we're going to start to see some differences and the differences remind us that sin is ever present maybe some of you are already there god said to adam be fruitful multiply and fill the earth and subdue it what god actually said to adam was be fruitful multiply fill the earth and subdue it and it is noticeably absent in genesis chapter 9 verse 1. he doesn't tell adam to subdue the earth now that is the first hint of the problem that noah is facing omission of subdue the earth is not to say i don't want you to rule but it's suggesting that he's going to struggle to rule his omission of that last imperative suggests there are going to be some problems in your exercising of authority over the created order it's not going to be easy it's not going to be the same for you as it was for adam in at four adam in genesis chapter one before sin entered in the world the whole of the created kingdom sat in obeyance to adam and eve perfectly it's difficult for us to even imagine all of the animal kingdoms sat perfectly in obedience to adam they did exactly what adam told them to do one of our developments personally on a family level over the last year since i last visited is that we got a puppy one of the worst decisions i've ever made i'll tell you the kids petitioned for about a year and i was the one person in the house saying no and that works for me because i get to the final say and it got to the point where the kids are closing prayers at mealtimes no joke i'm sat there at the table i'm right beside them and they're praying thank you for the food and for your goodness this day and please let dad say yes to a puppy and this just went on and on and on and on and then and and laura supplements their efforts by telling them the persistence this the parable of the of the the persistent uh widow that comes to jesus and just keeps knocking on the door so just keep asking so i gave in i said sure let's do this if you want to see a picture of a disobedient animal come to my house you want to see a picture of an animal not submitting to his master come to my house but more broadly we see that the animal kingdom is not assuming its rightful place under the head of humanity god doesn't say subdue it in fact what he does say what he does say genesis 9 verse 2 the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea so god doesn't say subdue it he says they're going to be terrified of you and you might say well it doesn't matter how we get there surely that's job done but that's not the case the animal kingdom now has a fear a dread a terror of humanity and that can play itself out in many ways there might be some obedience but not willfully there might be the animal running away from noah the animal might attack noah that fear in that dread can play itself out in a number of ways and that's what we experience the point is there is a clear fracture in the relationship between humanity and the created world this is just one symptom one expression of the discord which sin has introduced things aren't as they should be and so my mandate remains the same fill the earth but just so you know it's going to be really hard never was the mandate easier than when it was given to adam before sin entered the into the world in god's grace the mandate comes to us given to noah still residing with us today but the presence of sin makes it all together difficult to obey the discord between the animal kingdom and humanity is just one expression of that another difference interestingly is that our diet changes god says every moving thing that lives shall be food for you as i gave you the green plants i give you everything now we need to be careful because genesis 1 doesn't say necessarily exactly what man was and wasn't to eat as it relates to his daily diet there's a very clear statement you are to eat the the plants there's just no mention of eating meat and then in genesis chapter nine it crops up it seems reasonable to infer that prior to sin and god's wisdom we didn't eat animals post sin now we do and i know what you're thinking i'm actually quite happy with this outworking of the fall i'm with you praise the lord for good steak but just be careful not to put your meaning on the text remember the fact that we're told to eat meat is yet another expression of the brokenness that exists between us and the created order this doesn't become a mandate to become a vegetarian it's simply a reminder one of the ways in which you will exercise control over the created order is simply to kill and to eat it's going to be really hard for you to master the created world god says to noah the presence of sin is going to make it really hard for you to obey my instructions one of the ways in which you will make progress is to kill and to eat them you're exercising your authority as you do that and so we're just reminded again things aren't as they should be god then goes on to talk about what happens if a human being dies first of all if if one of these creatures kills you i'll require his life the animal and then he says and if a fellow man kills you i'll require his life so you see how this this picture between the created world and humanity goes far beyond simply a discord between us and the animal kingdom god is now starting to point to the discord that exists between us between human beings and he says in this new world it is entirely plausible that you will kill one another and if you do i'll require the life of the murderer of course with this our minds go back to genesis 4. the first sin that happens after genesis 3 is that of murder and specifically a man killing his own brother one of the problems as you read genesis i find is that the narratives are so familiar to us a lot of these stories are so familiar to us and we've been hearing them for years and so we can easily lose the the power and the significance of these narratives just think afresh with me if you are adam and eve or if you are the reading genesis for the very first time ever and you get to genesis 3 and you see just how much has been forsaken by virtue of sin just how terrible are the the consequences for adam and eve's disobedience eating a fruit at the end of genesis chapter 3 you don't know what's coming next and the dust settles god finishes speaking the judgments and i think adam and eve might be sat there saying how's this going to play out what's coming down the road we we understand that we've introduced sin into the world now it's now in our dna we can't we can't get rid of it and we understand exactly what we did wrong we took of the fruit that god said don't take and and we see now our disobedience for what it was but how is this sin thing going to play out what what's happening what's what's coming round the corner and god says genesis chapter 4 murder the first act of disobedience after taking of the fruit is murder a man killing his brother out of jealousy you go from taking a fruit to killing your brother god says let me show you how sin is going to work itself out this is no small thing that just happened the consequences of what you just did are by no means light there are some sins around us in us that we belittle them we think well it's not really that serious god says no let me show you how big a deal it is that you just disobeyed me and do not think that you sit here this morning better than cain in any way don't think that you sit here this morning in and of yourself by your own strength strength morally more upright than cain was apart from any work of god's grace in your heart you sit here this morning exactly the same as cain first john tells us he who hates his brother is a murderer the murmurings in your heart of hatred of dislike towards another human being are exactly the same murmurings that were in cain's heart and it is only god's restraining grace that has stopped you from killing someone that's the only difference in your life and cain's life we all sit here this morning grossly infected by the disease that is sin and you can't get rid of it it courses through your veins and you are as capable as of the sin that cain committed as he indeed was and god makes that plain he says if a man takes another man's life i'm gonna require his life he's reminding us that in this new world things aren't as they ought to be murder's a thing now it's a real possibility and just zoom out and consider how that functions as a hindrance to the mission the mission is image bearers representatives fill the earth make my glory known arguably there is nothing that could cause more injury to the mission than killing an image bearer fill the earth with image bearers and we say actually we'll kill them we're going to stop the mission advancing and that propensity is in all of us in just a few chapters you'll be at the tower of babel incident you remember that as the men come together and say two things let us make a name for ourselves so that we may not be dispersed did you ever wonder why they said that second thing let us make a name for ourselves there's their pride on display they don't want to make a name for god they want to make a name for themselves so that we may not be dispersed why should that even be a concern to them why should they even care about dispersing because the mandate is go fill the earth and their answer is we're not going anywhere that is their very intentional act of disobedience against the mission and that is the inclination of every single one of us apart from god's work of grace in our hearts and so what we see is that the world in which noah steps into the world in which we find ourselves is very very very far east of eden we're not where we want to be the last difference would be simply by focusing on the concept of image bearing god says in verse six whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for god made man in his own image and a very simple observation is this that in genesis chapter one the concept of image bearing was introduced in order to be celebrated in genesis chapter 9 the concept of image bearing is introduced as a warning in genesis chapter 1 let us make man according to our image one of the highest texts in that chapter we celebrate this incredible privilege image bearing in genesis chapter nine it functions as the basis of a warning against murder look how far we've fallen and so the composite picture of these seven verses is one of an emphatic declaration of hope juxtaposed with notes of despair an emphatic declaration of hope juxtaposed with very clear notes of despair we've got a mission we still sit at the top of the created order praise the lord for his goodness and look at the reality with which we're confronted look at the world that we live in we praise god this morning for his goodness to us and at the same time we are all called to acknowledge honestly the presence of sin around us and in us the text is a sobering reminder of our sin and the difficulties it presents to us as we seek to make god's glory known so the question is where do we go where do we go from this we see the hope but boy do we see the despair where do we go we have to remember that these seven verses are part of the noahic covenant i haven't mentioned this all that much this morning i want to talk about it now these seven verses fit within the broader context of a covenant god is making a covenant with noah the way to think about the noeic covenant is simply in terms of rest the name noah means rest and when god established a covenant with noah what he was doing was he was introducing a level of rest specifically rest respite from the effects of sin so the way the noah covenant works is to introduce barriers to sin itself god says in this new creative work by my grace i'm actually going to introduce some barriers to keep sin in to stop it getting to the genesis 6 levels i'm not going to let sin have its own way the noit covenant has some very very very practical implications for the way you live your life if you understand the theology of it to introduce rest from sin you start to see the importance of things like the death penalty when a country does away with the death penalty for the crime of murder makes a grave mistake because that government is deciding to work against the divinely ordained rest that god has given us against the effects of sin and there's more that we could talk about the point is the noah covenant gives us rest but here's the thing it's not the final word it's not the final answer we all understand that covenant is not god's final answer to the problem of sin it gives us a measure of rest it gives us a respite from the terrible effects of sin but it's not the final answer if god stopped here in genesis chapter 9 we would still be in an incredible mess today because of our sin we have to look beyond in order to understand where this covenant is headed so what we might do is just think through the subsequent covenants it's not the case that each covenant is the same some people will argue the various covenants of scripture are a reiteration of the previous one it's not the case but they do build on each other so genesis chapter nine is the first covenant it's the nowhere covenant it lays the foundation it gives us rest in a few chapters time you're going to come to the abrahamic covenant there god singles out abraham and his line and he promises them land seed and blessing and he says i'm going to work out my plan through you this is god identifying ultimately and eventually the nation of israel as his chosen instrument that builds on the foundation laid by the noaa covenant from there he goes to the mosaic covenant given at sinai to the people of israel as they enter into the land he says let me give you some laws if you obey them you're going to flourish you'll flourish in your relationship with me in the land it's an administrative covenant to administrate life the people fail they disobey and eventually they go into exile the next covenant is the davidic one think of a pyramid the noah covenant is the foundation then the abrahamic then the mosaic and then the davidic and the davidic signals out one family one line the davidic line and he says actually i'm going to work through this one line to raise up the final solution to the problem of sin and as you know that davidic covenant then leads us to christ who brings in the new covenant which was signed and sealed on the cross when jesus said it is finished and there is the final answer to the problem of sin what the noah it covenant does is it introduces that storyline it's not the final answer we see in just seven verses an emphatic declaration of hope but at the same time is juxtaposed with very clear clear expression of brokenness and so we have to go somewhere else we have to find the ultimate solution and it's found in the new covenant given by christ on the cross who says it is finished you want the final answer you look to me on the cross as a payment for your sin and if you come here this morning not knowing this not having put your faith in this not orienting your life around this then you sit in genesis chapter nine you are choosing to submit yourself to the sin that is in your heart and in the world you haven't gone beyond this chapter in the biblical storyline you stand under god's wrath accursed and you have to give an account for your sin one day and you won't be able to and so he will punish you justly if you come here this morning having never put your faith in christ please look this morning ultimately to the cross confess your sins to god and say i accept your son as a savior i accept your son as my savior and the payment for my sin that's where this chapter should push us the knoweth covenant cannot be the final answer it can't it is just the foundation that god then builds upon to lead us to christ and without christ you're lost but with him you have everything now one really interesting study is to think about the mandate and how that finds reiterations through scripture to further make the point we can think about god's mandate to adam and to noah to be fruitful multiply and fill the earth if you really want to know how this story ends do a word study on that mandate it is found over and over and over again throughout scripture god keeps bringing it up and he keeps saying i am going to do this you are faithless you fail me remember immediately after this text noah sins he's not the perfect answer he's not the solution noah sins but over and over and over again we find the imperative being reiterated by god through scripture demonstrating his commitment to work out his plan now the final expression of that comes all the way in the new testament turn with me to paul's letter to the colossians we could spend the rest of our day tracing out this mandate as it finds expressions throughout the rest of scripture but let me just show you one final testimony to the mandate given to adam and noah in paul's letter to the colossians paul's letter to the colossians is loaded with creation theology all through colossians he is pointing the readers back to the theology of creation to serve a particular purpose now look with me in colossians chapter one what paul says verse three we always thank god the father our lord jesus christ when we pray for you the colossians we're doing a wonderful job we thank god for you verse 4 since we heard of your faith in christ jesus and the love that you have for all the saints verse 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven of this you have heard before in the word of the truth that is the gospel verse 6 which has come to you as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing the gospel has come to you as it has in the whole world bearing fruit and increasing paul is playing with the mandate given to adam he's using the same verbs as we're given to adam as we're given to noah and he's saying that mandate to feel the earth to bear fruit and to multiply that mandate back in genesis 1 and genesis 9 is being worked out this very day through the gospel he says the gospel is bearing fruit and multiplying it's the gospel now that is bearing fruit and multiplying and so it might be that in the course of this morning you've sat there and thought well if it's true that this imperative comes to me and rests with me today by virtue of the noise covenant if it sits on me to be an image bearer who is bearing fruit and multiplying how do i work that out practically we had six kids in obedience to the adamic mandate i'm kidding here's how you work it out practically you anchor yourself to the gospel of jesus christ because paul teaches us it is through the gospel of jesus christ that the mandate is now being fulfilled the gospel is bearing fruit it is the gospel that's multiplying it is the gospel that is increasing in this broken world so if you want to be found faithful to the mandate given to adam and to noah you make your life all about the gospel you sit under the gospel you refresh your heart to the gospel each and every day you open this book and you study the gospel and you refresh your heart to it you sing songs of the salvation that christ brings in fellowship you speak the truth to another about the glories of the gospel and then you start to order your steps around the imperatives that flow out of the gospel later on in this letter paul tells us verse 15 jesus christ is the image bearer he's the ultimate and perfect image bearer he alone is the one that perfectly made god's glory known and then when paul gets into the imperative sections in chapter three he says something very curious put off the old man put on the new man too many translations just change that and say put off the old self put on the new self paul is making an illusion all the way back to adam don't anchor yourself to adam he says put off the old man put on the new man jesus christ that is how you're found faithful this morning to the mandate given to noah which comes to you which rests on your shoulders you are responsible to that imperative and the only way you can fulfill it is to anchor your life to the gospel you immerse your heart and your mind in the gospel and you order your steps around all of the commands that derive from it and as you as a church collectively help one another to this end as you link arms and you look one another in the eye and you say i am here to help you obey and your neighbor says and i am here to help you obey as you look at one another and say i am going to do all that i can to encourage you towards jesus christ i am going to do all that i can to help you fix your eyes on the glories of the gospel as a way of life when that is how you as a church think about your responsibility before god he will be greatly glorified he's not getting into the specifics of what job you should choose and where you should live it's a wisdom core and you need to figure that out but as a starter you need to think about your responsibility to make god's glory known and the only way you will ever succeed is if you link arms and say we are all about the gospel and as you shred out a path of obedience steadfast obedience day after day week by week month after month through you in ways that you won't even appreciate until you get to glory the earth is being filled with the glory of god until jesus christ returns let's pray to close my father we praise you this morning for your wisdom as we see it in your word we praise you for the emphatic declaration of hope that opens genesis chapter 9. oh lord what is man that you are mindful of him that after all of the sin you would re-establish him as the head of the created order that you didn't say i'm done with you you didn't demote man you didn't bring him down to the level of the beast you maintained his lofty position and you gave him the same instruction as you gave adam you made us your image bearers with the glorious task of making you known we praise you for that hope this morning and lord with all honesty and sobriety we acknowledge the presence of sin the sin that does dwell in our hearts and the sin that is around us we see it etched out in the words that you gave to noah things have changed post-flood things are different we're not in eden anymore and we see that and we repent of our own sin and we seek your forgiveness help us to be honest about the sin in our lives and the desperate situation in which we find ourselves and lord we rejoice to project forward beyond genesis 9. it was but the first of many covenants laying a foundation to hem in the effects of sin giving us a measure of rest so that your plan could advance help us to remember this is not the final word the noe8 covenant is not the final answer to the problem of sin it lays the foundation for your glorious and eventual response at the cross that's where we see the final solution and we rejoice in that we delight that the new covenant is a reality for us lord if there's any here if there's any here that don't know you in a saving way be be gracious to save them this morning quicken their hearts into repentance and faith in the risen lord jesus and we ask that you'd help us to acknowledge our responsibility to make you known to boast of your glory how by anchoring ourselves to the gospel we can't do it apart from that but paul with just a brief illusion in colossians 1 shows us it is now by virtue of the gospel that the earth is being filled the fruit is being born it's through the gospel and no other means that the task is being completed we rejoice and ask that you would strengthen us father strengthen this church to fix their minds and their hearts on the gospel to orient our lives around the saving message of christ and to submit to all of his commands that we would be found obedient joyfully walking out a path of obedience until christ returns trusting that in ways we can't necessarily see through our fidelity to the gospel your glory is being made manifest this is our desire and we ask it in jesus name amen

Channel: Trinity Bible

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Length: 66min 36sec (3996 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021